Universities scramble for information on postgraduates

Fear that fee increases could wipe out demand for many postgraduate courses is prompting the government and universities to find out about postgraduates' backgrounds

Georgia Thresh, postgraduate officer at Nottingham University, says the new funding regime will make future students think harder about whether a postgraduate course will be worthwhile. Photograph: Fabio De Paola Fabio De Paola/Fabio De Paola

"It's crucial that something is done quickly," says Michael Farthing, the group's chairman, and vice-chancellor at the University of Sussex. "It could take years to re-establish postgraduate courses wiped out by the falling demand that lack of student funding will bring. We must act now to avoid a meltdown."

The fear is that next year's changes to the undergraduate fee regime will have a serious knock-on effect for postgraduates: postgraduate fees are likely to rise because of the increase in undergraduate fees and cuts to university teaching grants; home students graduating thousands of pounds in debt may be unwilling to consider taking on more debt as postgraduates, especially as no loans are currently available at this level; and poorer students will be particularly reluctant to consider further study.

Or will they? Also worrying, says the report, is that so little is known about postgraduate students that it will be difficult to work out what the true impact of the changes will be on them. It calls for more effort to find out about their backgrounds and to monitor the participation of different social and economic groups.

The 1994 Group is not the only body to be concerned about this. In his report on postgraduates, One Step Beyond, published in 2010, Professor Sir Adrian Smith called on the government to set up a working group to consider what sort of information should be collected about postgraduates in order to inform policy, emphasising the need to ensure fair access for diverse students. The Browne review backed this up. In one of its few forays into postgraduate issues, the Browne report stated: "We know very little about the social background of postgraduates and this means we cannot assess patterns of access in postgraduate study."

As a result, the government directed the Higher Education Funding Council for England to try to establish a baseline for monitoring patterns in postgraduates and to identify the most glaring gaps in knowledge. One of these, says Christopher Millward, of Hefce, is what fees different institutions are charging – and what sort of charges postgraduates can be expected to meet. Nor is there much information about the costs of delivering courses.

But the area that needs to be "completely reconceptualised" says Millward, is widening participation – increasing the numbers of students from a wider range of economic, social and ethnic groups – and ensuring they get fair access to study.

The funding council is also looking into gathering information on postgraduates in order to help inform student choice. Increasing global competition for postgraduates, combined with the likelihood of higher fees, means students are increasingly anxious to establish exactly what they will get for their money if they sign up for a postgraduate course.

"Our starting point isn't to assume that the information needs of postgraduates are the same as undergraduates," says Millward, who explains these students will already understand what university life is about and many will have extensive experience of the workplace. The funding council will publish research in the autumn on what sorts of things taught postgraduates want to know.

Meanwhile, a steering group is also looking into the possibility of extending the National Student Survey to postgraduates. The Higher Education Academy (HEA) already publishes generalised reports on taught and research postgraduate experiences, designed to be used by institutions to improve quality. A postgraduate NSS would aim to allow postgraduates to compare what they could expect at different institutions, and could even open the possibility of league tables.

Sean Mackney, senior deputy chief executive at the HEA, says there are practical problems with such a survey because postgraduate cohorts in many subjects are too small to produce meaningful data. But he says it could be helpful, as long as students are not deluged with information.

The danger of providing too much information without helping students to sift through it is one factor behind the idea of extending to postgraduates the Key Information Sets, which for the first time, this year, will give information on courses, fees, graduate employment and salaries to undergraduates .

Gaskell argues that the kinds of things postgraduates need to know differ enormously depending on their course, type and level of study. "This is the argument for universities to grasp the initiative themselves. They know what the key information is," he says

From a student's point of view, the most important information is whether their postgraduate course will be worth the money. Georgia Thresh, postgraduate officer at the University of Nottingham, says that for her one of the biggest arguments against staying on for a one-year taught masters in politics and contemporary history was funding. The new undergraduate fee regime, she predicts, will make future students think even harder about whether a postgraduate course will be worthwhile.

"People are going to be demanding much more transparency in terms of hidden costs, such as field trips and books," she says. "As fees go up, demand from students to get what they are paying for is going to increase."

The 1994 Group study argues that the risk of UK students avoiding postgraduate study demands immediate action, including the government negotiating better postgraduate student finance packages with banks and providing more information and advice for students. Hefce agrees. It has already announced extra money for taught postgraduates and is about to release a consultation on extending this.

It is still unclear, however, what institutions will decide to do about raising postgraduate fees in line with those for undergraduates.